Pre-K develops early critical skills

The Times Union is on to something when it links the opportunity to invest in early education at the prekindergarten level with reducing New York’s dropout rate (“Pre-K is ticket to success,” June 25).

However, while investment assists with access, it cannot guarantee quality. Sadly, much pre-K is simply day care. This distinction matters because economically disadvantaged children stand to gain the most from the vocabulary, early literacy, social and emotional skills that effective pre-K provides.

Rice University academics Betty Hart and Todd Risley found that, by age 3, children from low-income families hear, on average, 30 million fewer words than their peers from more affluent homes.

If unaddressed, this word gap — and other early learning skill deficits — become the achievement gap, which continues to place vulnerable children at a disadvantage through K-12 education, contributing to disappointing dropout rates.

A multiyear study by the National Institute for Early Education revealed that high quality early education investment can move the needle for the poorest children. Over two years, a state Supreme Court-mandated New Jersey initiative closed about half of the achievement gap between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers before kindergarten.

Investment in evidence-based effective preschool must be tied to critical school readiness outcomes, such as gains in language and vocabulary, early math skills, background knowledge and school-ready behaviors like sharing, persistence and taking direction.

These pay dividends for the least advantaged and society as a whole, which benefits from preparing every child for school, reducing the risk of them dropping out later.